5/03/2018

After my second viewing of Avengers: Infinity War, my first with a public crowd, I noticed that everybody filed out of the theater in dead silence. It was like we just attended our best friend's funeral and just needed to be left alone. There was a pall in the air, and understandably so. The ending of that movie was brutal, man.

But what does any of it mean? Almost immediately the thinkpieces started going up about "How will the dead heroes come back?" and "Who is really dead?" and so forth. Of course, none of us expect so many major characters to remain piles of ash, do we? We're talking about the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange...these are MAJOR characters with sequels on the way! Well, the film's writers say otherwise. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely tell Buzzfeed that every death is "real", and fans better start getting used to it...

“['Avengers 4'] doesn’t do what you think it does," states Markus. "Also … [the deaths are] real. I just want to tell you it’s real, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will be able to move on to the next stage of grief."

Yeah, okay, that sounds like bullshit plausible.

My immediate thought is that, no matter what Markus says, there's still a little wiggle room in there. The deaths are real? Okay, I believe you...in regards to the characters whose physical death we saw. Loki, Heimdall...I think they are dead and gone. Gamora...well, I think the Soul Stone may even be playing some tricks there, but most likely she's not coming back.

The others? The ones who turned to dust after a snap of Thanos' fingers? They were never killed in the first place, just sent off to another dimension or something. Thus, Markus isn't lying when he tells us the deaths were real. If the Time Stone is use to reverse time, won't the deaths still have been real even if they come back?

Or, maybe Marvel is ballsier than we thought and those characters aren't returning. Now THAT would be some impressive shit. Black Panther 2 with Shuri in the suit? I'm down for that.